Modern phenomenology, with its roots in Husserlian philosophy, has been taken up and utilised in a myriad of ways within different disciplines, but until recently has remained relatively underused within sports studies. A corpus of sociological-phenomenological work is now beginning to develop in this domain, alongside a longer-standing literature in feminist phenomenology. These specific social-phenomenological forms explore the situatedness of lived-body experience within a particular social structure. After providing a brief overview of key strands of phenomenology, this article considers some (...) of the ways in which sociological, and particularly feminist, phenomenology might be used to analyse female sporting embodiment. For illustrative purposes, data from an autophenomenographic project on female distance running are also included, in order briefly to demonstrate the application of phenomenology within sociology, as both theoretical framework and methodological approach. (shrink)

According to the differences in the spatial-temporal co-location of human individuals, Alfred Schutz divided the contemporaneous lifeworld into two major realms: the realm of consociates made up of individuals sharing a community of space and a community of time, and the realm of contemporaries made up of individuals sharing neither a community of space nor a community of time. Extending Schutz''s phenomenological analysis to cyberspace, this paper delineates an emergent third realm – the realm of consociated contemporaries, in which individuals (...) share a community of time without sharing a community of space. A central argument of this paper is that the emergence of this social domain in cyberspace reconfigures the structure of the lifeworld by creating a new spatial-temporal condition of human contact, which gives rise to a new mode of human interaction and a new form of human relationship. The revolution of electronic communication is therefore a revolution of the ways in which human individuals come to construct we-relationships with one another in shared meaning contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I explicate what it means to see phenomenologically for an able-bodied researcher in the field of disability, and how this seeing yields a non-reductionistic understanding of the phenomenon of disability. My aim is to show how in this context, I, as a human and social scientist can use phenomenological methodology for both collecting and interpreting data. Though phenomenological philosophy can provide the basis of social scientific epistemology, it does not lend itself easily to a single specific or (...) programmatic social scientific methodology. I offer possible ways of using phenomenological theory, methodology and techniques in order to understand the experience of a person with physical disability learning to use a wheelchair. I use data from a clinical encounter between a physical therapist (PT) and an adult with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) in an inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Midwestern United States in order to flesh out phenomenological seeing. I conclude with implications for qualitative researchers who use phenomenological methods to inform their work. (shrink)

This article analyzes the structure of the “we relation” drawing on Alfred Schütz's theoretical framework. It argues for a flexibilization of the initial framework in order to capture not only the tension, but also the variations in the relation between the lived experience of the other in lived duration and the reflection upon the other, through which meaning is constructed. In order to do so, it revisits Schütz’s claims about immersion into togetherness as part of the experience of copresence and (...) it bridges them with the apparently opposite Sartrian view of the other as either objectifying or being objectified. This leads to certain shifts in the distinction between consociates and contemporaries and sheds light upon the ways in which the process of constructing the other as meaningful is not an added layer, but a co-constitutive element in the vivid experience of copresence and of absence. (shrink)

In the present paper, I intend to systematically revisit Thomas Luckmann’s account of the relation between phenomenology and sociology and to assess its strengths and weaknesses in terms of constructive criticism. In order to achieve this aim, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will reconstruct the Luckmannian approach by means of an exhaustive analysis of his programmatic texts. Second, I will identify its strengths and merits. And finally, I will discuss its shortcomings and try to correct them in (...) two ways, namely, by bringing Luckmann into a dialogue with other sociological-theoretical and phenomenological accounts, and by counteracting some of his problematic claims with alternative insights contained in his own work. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz is, without a doubt, one of the phenomenologists that contributed the most to the reflection on how to apply insights from phenomenological philosophy to the, empirical and theoretical, human and social sciences. However, his work tends to be neglected by many of the current advocates of phenomenology within these disciplines. In the present paper, I intend to remedy this situation. In order to do so, I will systematically revisit his mundane and social-scientifically oriented account of phenomenology, which, as (...) I shall show, emerges from a theoretical confrontation with the Husserlian distinction between transcendental phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. (shrink)

The article honors aspects of George Psathas’ life achievement. In particular, it describes his commitment to “Human Studies” and places his social phenomenological research work in dialogue with Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel.

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz’s work. I have set two major goals in this lecture. The first is to scrutinize the postulate of adequacy, as this postulate is the most crucial of Schutz’s methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate ‘adequacy of meaning’ in analogy to the postulate of ‘causal adequacy’ (a concept used in jurisprudence) and regarded both (...) as complementary and, in the context of sociological analysis, critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality, and reduced Weber’s two postulates of adequacy into one, namely, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem, in my view, is that Schutz’s reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber’s ‘causal adequacy’. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz’s conception of social science) are considered to be adequate if they are ‘understandable’ to an everyday actor, even when they are based on the most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber’s empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy that links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz’s phenomenological life-world analysis. My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology in which a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz’s analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue ‘adequate’ empirical research. This lecture focuses on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics. (shrink)

This paper discusses ethnomethodology's program in relation to the phenomenological life-world analysis of Alfred Schutz. A recent publication of Garfinkel's early writings sheds new light on how he made use of phenomenological reflections in order to create a new sociological approach. Garfinkel used Schutz's life-world analysis as a source of inspiration, called for 'misreading' in the sense of an alternate reading and developed a new, empirical approach to the analysis of social order which he called 'ethnomethodology'. Ethnomethodologists usually acknowledge the (...) historical importance of Schutz but emphasize that Garfinkel succeeded to overcome the limitations of phenomenological analyses and moved beyond. This view has spread above all in the Anglosaxon countries. In German sociology, Schutz's life-world analysis still has a much stronger standing than ethnomethodology and is interpreted as a systematic whole. Following Luckmann, it is discussed as a protosociological foundation of the methodology of social sciences or, following Srubar, as a philosophical anthropology with two poles: a subjective and a social, pragmatic pole. Both versions claim to analyze the meaningful constitution of the social world, to serve as a foundation of sociological methodology and to provide guidelines for an `adequate' sociology. While Garfinkel used phenomenological concepts for sociological analysis, Luckmann clearly distinguishes the two: you either do phenomenology (protosociology) or you do sociology (a theoretically guided, empirical sociology of knowledge). This paper describes the present-day debate in German sociology and compares ethnomethodology's program with these interpretations of Schutz's life-world analysis. (shrink)

Friendship, as a unique form of social relationship, establishes a particular union among individual human beings which allows them to overcome diverse boundaries between individual subjects. Age, gender or cultural differences do not necessarily constitute an obstacle for establishing friendship and as a social phenomenon, it might even include the potential to exist independently of space and time. This analysis in the interface of social science and phenomenology focuses on the principles of construction and constitution of this specific form of (...) human encounter. In a “parallel action,” the perspective of social science focuses on concrete socio-historical constructions of friendship in different time periods. These findings are confronted with the description of principles of the subjective constitution of the phenomenon of “friendship” from a phenomenological perspective. The point of reference for the study is the real type of the symbolically established and excessively idealized form of friendship intended for eternity which was especially popular in eighteenth century Germany. Analogous to the method of phenomenological reduction, three different levels of protosociological reduction are developed for the exploration of the unique social phenomenon of friendship. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to caution the increasing number of contemporary sociologists who are engaging with continental phenomenological sociology without looking at the Anglo-American tradition. I look at a particular debate that took place during the formative period in the Anglo-American tradition. My focus is on the way participants sought to negotiate the disciplinary division between philosophy and sociology. I outline various ways that these disciplinary exigencies, especially the institutional struggles with the sociological establishment, shaped how participants defined phenomenological (...) sociology. I argue that despite the supposed theoretical, methodological, and substantial differences between these waves of phenomenological sociology, the contemporary wave could benefit from some of the lessons that were learned by their predecessors. (shrink)

My aim is to depict Psathas’s position on ethnomethodology as a way of doing phenomenological sociology. On this, he contested with others who argued that ethnomethodology is not a phenomenological sociology at all. His claim was that ethnomethodology is a part of the phenomenological movement. In this dispute, he offered two kinds of arguments. On the one hand, he documented the strong phenomenological background of Garfinkel’s ideas. On the other hand, he found in Garfinkel’s own words expressions of gratitude to (...) Husserl, Gurwitsch, and Schutz, among other phenomenologists. However, having proved that there was a close relation of Garfinkel with ethnomethodology, Psathas went on to show that Garfinkel turned phenomenological ideas into something new; in particular, he turned phenomenology into an experimental science dealing with the natural attitude. This is a groundbreaking contribution that Psathas appreciated and comprehended as no one else. (shrink)